NASA celebrates stamp that has traveled 3.5 billion miles

NASA celebrates stamp that has traveled 3.5 billion miles
In this undated photo provided by NASA, a 1991 "Pluto Not Yet Explored" stamp is affixed to the New Horizons spacecraft. The stamp was officially recognized by Guinness World Records at Postal Service headquarters in Washington Tuesday, July 19, 2016, for the farthest distance traveled by a postage stamp. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory via AP)

NASA is celebrating a 29-cent Pluto-themed postage stamp stuck to the side of the New Horizons spacecraft that has traveled nearly 3.5 billion miles from Earth.

NASA says the 1991 stamp that carried the message "Pluto Not Yet Explored" helped inspire the New Horizons team. The team stuck it to the spacecraft shortly before it launched in January 2006, and NASA says the U.S. Postal Service officially canceled it after New Horizons made its flyby of Pluto last July.

Guinness World Records recognized the stamp at Postal Service headquarters in Washington on Tuesday for the farthest distance traveled by a postage stamp.

The stamp and New Horizons' next stop is a Kuiper Belt object 1 billion miles beyond Pluto, where the spacecraft is expected to arrive in 2019.

© 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Citation: NASA celebrates stamp that has traveled 3.5 billion miles (2016, July 20) retrieved 28 March 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2016-07-nasa-celebrates-billion-miles.html
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